Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-10-27-Speech-3-144"
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"en.19991027.5.3-144"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, as the representative of the Group of the Party of European Socialists, I wish to begin my contribution to this debate on the restructuring of firms by repeating the message of the Michelin employees, a message which I understood to consist of a thrice-repeated “no”, whatever Mr Pronk might say.
No, ladies and gentlemen, in a balanced and prosperous Europe, it is no longer acceptable to have a firm announce a 17% increase in profits while at the same time making 7,500 employees redundant. No, ladies and gentlemen, it is not a moral situation where the share price of this firm can increase by 12% following this announcement, thus creating added value for shareholders without creating any sort of additional wealth, quite the contrary. No, ladies and gentlemen, employees can no longer be content with the incomplete and twisted, if not actually false, information issued by the Michelin bosses in attempting to justify their decision.
By the way, this new and serious scandal which shook the media and the political milieu in France, demonstrates, if proof were needed, the urgent need for strong and appropriate action in Europe to finally reconcile economic performance and social guarantees, growth and employment, freedom to do business and the defence of wages. The European Socialists are demanding such measures and this is why they have drawn up, among other things, a number of proposals.
Firstly, a direct link between public aid and agreements, including a reduction of working hours, with financial penalties for firms which do not respect their commitments even though they may have received public monies. The Socialists are also asking for a report on the application of the European Directive on collective redundancies, to be accompanied by proposals for improvements intended just to make it effective in defending jobs and employees. The European Socialists are insistent, finally, that the European Directive on the establishment of a European Works Council should be reviewed, so that employees can receive proper information, in the normal course of things and at the right time, and so that there can be real consultation, which presupposes that employees are given adequate resources in terms of time and independent experts.
Without these minimum measures and some others, accompanied by concrete measures against the relocation of firms within the European Union and other measures against social dumping outside the Union, the European social model, so dear to some of our politicians, including those on the right wing, will never be anything but empty words, and this will contribute to exacerbating the anti-European feeling pervading our countries and many employees.
As is often said, progress is worth nothing unless it is shared, and for us this means that, in a world of constant change, we should stop placing the main burden of effort and sacrifice on employees in order then to let the most wealthy and most powerful be the first to benefit from the positive results of this effort and sacrifice. It is more than time for action at Council and Commission level, and I would even go so far as to say, in conclusion, that this is of course a matter on which the consistency of our societies, industrial peace, the very survival of the European ideal, but also, of course, the interests of enterprise as a whole and thus of the soundness of the European economy, depend."@en1
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